


Paris

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Bianca's POV, F/M, Gen, first person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-02
Updated: 2006-04-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 01:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17255336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Summery: That night during the time of the Theatre Of the Vampires when Armand encounters Bianca, told from Bianca's point of view.





	Paris

There was a quiet to the landscape there. Paris cast a warm shadow upon this little outskirt of forest, accentuating its solitude somehow, rather than giving the illusion of civilization. They were sweet, so sweet, those wooden houses interspersed throughout the trees, like stars dotting a clouded sky. The one I had taken for myself was an abandoned thing of dust and rotting wood. It had a cellar dug into the ground, which would have provided just space enough to keep a winter assortment of dried meats and produce. Now it held two long strings of pearls, a dress, and a silk bag in which to pack it all away when I decided to move again. By day it held my body as well, and its shelter was quite sufficient to protect me from the sun. I had all that I needed 

Why was I there? Even now I do not know. I think I meant to see him, but I am not altogether sure that I was enough myself to truly want anything. “Bianca” was merely a word, dusty and archaic, spoken long ago by those who had dyed or forgotten. Tossed aside by the one I had sought to love, I was more a fully vampire then than I have ever been before or since; What life and what animation I had was founded completely in the pursuit of blood. But I digress. I do not presume to write my own memoirs here, monotonous as they are. I only wish to write about him on that night.

I was walking from a party which had been held in one of the grander houses. Need I say that warmth pulsed within me from a life I had taken only hours before? Ah, but it had been a gay scene, light from an overhanging chandelier catching in the wine, turning white to gold and red to flame. I brought down my prey quickly that night, and was left many hours of solitude in which to walk, and ponder making a visit to Paris itself. 

You see, I had heard of him, or rather I had heard of his likeness. It had come in bits and pieces from travelers, and snippets of foreign newspapers. What I knew was that the city of Paris held some macabre little theatre - a theatre of vampires - and that the theatre’s manager was said to be dreadfully young with auburn hair and strange eyes. And how could this description have been mere coincidence? Marius had said once, his sentences clipped as though to minimize the pain of speaking them, that Amadeo lived yet. If that was so, then I did not think myself so irrational in fancying that I could find him if I wished. 

As it happened, I need not have wondered after him. I never had to journey into Paris. Within moments, I felt another presence in the night, and I knew I did not walk, a lone monster among mortals. There was another like me, and what’s more, I knew him. I absolutely knew him. 

And at that moment did the name “Amadeo” cross my mind ? I do not think so. No, not a word surfaced in my consciousness, nothing that rational. There was only that dim knowledge, that intuitive familiarity. 

“Ravaged territory, my dear. No game unbespoken here. Make for safer territory by sun up.”

That voice. I knew it and I did not know it. It was Amadeo’s certainly, but it was cold and hollow. It was not the voice of a child, not even the voice of a man. I bowed my head, recoiling instinctively, my taffeta hood slipping down away from my hair. 

I turned, but I never did take in the sight of him, not really. Oh, yes, I did register those trite details of his appearance: that his once lush hair was clipped short, that he dressed in a suit of subdued black, tailored in the style of the day. I saw that there was something in his eyes that terrified me. I saw but I did not look. I fled. In a moment of utter irrationality I fled. 

I did not even return to my little cellar to get my things. Pearls, silk, and taffeta - all could be easily replaced. I could not escape the feeling that that creature I encountered was not my Amadeo. I sought to put him from my mind. 

It was only years later that thoughts of that night began to obsess me. My mind painted that all too brief glance in new colors. Had his eyes gone large and wandering when he saw me? Had his soft French held a hint of an Italian accent? In that instant before I left, had I seen him trembling out of the corner of my eye? 

We had passed each other like two boats in the night. We each saw the other’s light; We shared the same sea, but we were headed for different ports, and we were too estranged by distance and wind for words to pass between us. How unjust that it should have been so! It is I who did not cry out to him, it is true, but I reserve the right to blame fate for separating us. I loved him.

And I wonder still if it could have been different. I imagine myself whispering his name and enfolding him in my arms before he could think to question my presence. Perhaps I had run from the knowledge that his despair and his coldness echoed my own. Perhaps his eyes were the mirror that I had turned away from. 

Would he have cried to see me? Would we have found some private place together to spend the night speaking of the centuries that proceeded us? I do not know. That’s the horror of it really. We are lost to each other forever, lost even to ourselves, and there is so much that I will never know.


End file.
